Let me preface this by saying I am NOT a fan of amusement parks. A few years ago, we visited Six Flags in Chicago on a day when it was 112 degrees. Frank started vomiting almost immediately when we arrived and, of course, Six Flags would not give us a refund. We were out more than $300 and Frank was suffering pretty badly. He recovered very quickly once we left so we suspected it was the intense heat. On that day, I vowed to avoid amusement parks at all costs in the future.

Despite my vow, I reluctantly told Richard we could visit Disney World at least once when we moved to Florida. Last week, we spent two days there with Richard’s dad and step-mom and our hotel room had a Toy Story theme. The boys were thrilled!

On the first day, we visited Epcot. It was supposed to be a slow month for the park and it wasn’t too crowded nor were the lines long at all. We had super day!

It was also supposed to be a slow time of year for the Magic Kingdom but it was not slow at all. In fact, it was quite miserable. The heat – oh my gosh – the heat! We drank tons of water and bought three umbrellas to protect ourselves but we were all still miserable, including the children. Add the long lines for rides and trying to squeeze through crowds just to get to the bathroom, and you can imagine how cranky we all were by early afternoon. Richard’s dad joked that they should measure the agitation level of visitors every two hours at the park to see how much it goes up as the day progresses.

We had special tickets for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party that evening so we left mid-afternoon and returned to our hotel room for a shower and fresh clothes. We then went out for a nice dinner before heading back to the park around 8:30 p.m. We thought we’d be the only people heading in at that hour. Boy, were we wrong. The tram was packed!

Despite the crowds, it was far more pleasant after dark, when it was much cooler, and I told Richard I am never, ever, ever going back to the Magic Kingdom during daylight hours ever, ever, ever again.

We did have one fun visitor while we were at our hotel. We told the boys his name was Jiminy Cricket. He wasn’t very friendly, however. When I picked him up, he hissed at me!

This week’s Masonism:

We had a storm blow through here on Monday and the power went out for just a few seconds. Mason said excitedly, “Did you see the power go out? And then it came back in!”

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